Copending commonly assigned U.S. application Ser. No. 410,713, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, is directed to an apparatus for charging a shaft furnace. The apparatus provides a retrofittable system for rotatably suspending and driving a distribution chute. The chute replaces a conventional throat on an existing furnace with few modifications. The apparatus provides the advantages associated with use of a rotatable adjustable distribution chute to existing furnaces of small size. Charging material is typically provided to such an apparatus by a conventional skip conveyor.
One of the problems to be solved in this type of replacement is associated particularly with the lack of space available between the furnace head and the top of the skip conveyor. On the other hand, the installation must have a sufficiently high performance not to limit the transport capacity obtained by means of skips. Consequently, if there is a limit to the height in the design of the system for sluicing the charging material, this system must have an extensive width to be capable of absorbing the capacity of the skips. Now it is well known in this type of installation that the wider a hopper, the greater the problem of segregation, that is to say an irregular distribution of the material as a function of the granulometry, which occurs during the filling of the hopper and which is intensified when it is being emptied.